Erin Wiersma : Works from the "Examen" series

In the Viewing Room:
Erin Wiersma

Each painting from Kansas artist Erin Wiersma’s “Examen” series is a densely-layered composition of overlapping linear marks of hand-mixed pigments and polymer binders. More than its overt layers of painted or drawn lines of minimal palettes, each stratified painting based on a specific date, began as a daily practice; an act of mindfulness as a meditative ritual bordering on performance. Currently the dates are intended to point to a start time, generally placing the works on a timeline which may accurately correlate to the genesis of that painting or instead include dates of events that are important (in ways either small or significant) from both private or collective moments that are embodied in memory. It is this pursuit of the authentic and conscious mark which the artist feels parallels a kind of universal quest. Wiersma states,” In my drawings, I seek to discover a confluence of the spiritual and material. My works are created through a meditative process of tracing, eliminating, finding and forging drawn lines on the surface of the paper. These accumulated marks become intertwined layers and untraceable histories of past, present and future.”  As a temporal consideration, the artist’s single-minded deliberations define time for her as it brings deep space into form through each expressive gesture. At once equally contemplative and dynamic, vibrant translucency and opacity become metaphors for experience; contained, yet expansive within the ongoing continuum of Wiersma’s work.

Erin Wiersma has a B.A. from Messiah Collage, Grantham, PA and an M.F.A. from the University of Connecticut along with additional studies at the Institutio San Lodovica, in Orvieto, Italy. Wiersma has been recognized with several University Small Research Grants from Kansas State University, a Big 12 Faculty Fellowship (President’s Academic Excellence Award) and residencies including Two Coats of Paint, Brooklyn, NY, and Draw international, Caylus, France. Her work has been exhibited at Bottega Chioccia Tsarkova, Orvieto, Italy, Dairy Arts Center, Boulder, CO, Vita Arts Center, Ventura, CA, Governors Island, House B, Governors Island, NY, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Springfield Art Museum, Springfield MO, Clara Hatton Gallery, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, The Shore Institute of Contemporary Arts, Long Branch, NJ and numerous university art galleries. Wiersma is an Associate Professor of Art at Kansas State University.